
I did not know what to expect from today any more than I know what to expect from any other day. But, this scenario might have been pretty low on the list of expected outcomes if someone had asked.
I was settling in to do some work at 8am and I received a text from a good friend who had some good news to share. I offered to go for a walk in a downtown park- I had already had the Labrador out twice, but we do enjoy the outside, so- off we went.
About a half mile into the walk, we noticed the sky was getting a bit dramatic off to the northwest. Then we saw a faint rainbow beginning to develop. Then we saw the second arc of the double rainbow shimmer faintly to life. About 1/4 mile later, the double rainbow took perfect form directly in front of us. The full light of the sun directly behind us, and the storm moving directly towards us combined for a very short, but very vivid full double rainbow.
We were very much in the right place at the right time. The picture doesn’t do justice to the real thing, but it is pretty nice. Except that the building near the center of the image, directly under the rainbow is the local solid waste transfer station. Essentially, the dump.
I always try to compose my images with as little man-made landscape as possible, but this spectacle of nature was simply too wonderful to crop.
Three minutes later, the wind kicked up (quite hard, actually) and the rain overtook us. By the time we got back to the cars, we were wet and decently windblown. A lot of very old trees came down from this storm today- Helena set a new wind record today by hitting 74mph. Although we only had gusts that hit 74, nothing truly sustained, that is the official threshold for hurricane force.
It all started with a perfect rainbow, in the middle of January, right over the dump.

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